Agence France Presse January 21, 2005
Explosives Spiel der Mullahs
US sabre-rattling over Iran: military boldness or bluff?
By Peter Mackler
Armed with a new electoral mandate and a mission to wipe out tyranny, the White House is beating the drums over Iran and leaving the world to ponder whether Tehran might soon be in the crosshairs of US firepower.
But while the increasingly bellicose remarks about the potential nuclear threat from Iran appear to echo the buildup to the Iraq war, analysts are divided on whether the comments herald new US military boldness or constitute mere bluffs.
"I think there is a plausible prospect of limited military action," said Daniel Byman, a Middle East expert with the Brookings Institution think tank. "I would not say 'likely,' but I would not rule it out."
Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking as he and President George W. Bush kicked off their second term Thursday, fueled speculation of a move against Iran by putting it "right at the top of the list" of global trouble spots.
Cheney said he hoped for a negotiated solution to dismantle the Islamic republic's suspected nuclear weapons programs. But Bush raised the stakes earlier in the week by refusing to rule out the use of force.
The New Yorker magazine also made headlines with a report that US commandos had been operating inside Iran since mid-2004, selecting suspected weapons sites for possible airstrikes.
The Pentagon blasted the article by award-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh as "riddled with errors" but did not deny its overall premise or contention that Iran could be the next US target.
Joseph Cirincione, a disarmament expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had little doubt that Bush and his hardline war council were gearing up for a showdown with Iran.
"They believe they have a mandate, they have a limited amount of time to act on that mandate, and that by taking bold action they can change world history -- and they intend to do it," he said.
John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org think tank, said a campaign against Iran's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile facilities could be launched in a matter of "months, not years."
"Cheney's remarks left very little to the imagination and showed clearly that it's something they have given a lot of thought to," Pike told AFP.
The Bush administration's current policy is to count on the mediation of Britain, France and Germany to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, with a fallback threat to seek new UN sanctions.
But the Americans have been hardening their tone, not only on the nuclear issue but on Iran's alleged support for terrorism, its suspected meddling in neighboring Iraq and its human rights record.
Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice said this week that Washington wanted to see "a regime in Iran that is responsive to the concerns that we have about Iran's policies, which are 180 degrees antithetical to our own interests."
The administration is clearly in a bind: After cutting off virtually all trade and investment in the last quarter-century, it has very little diplomatic leverage with Tehran.
At the same time, hints of a possible US military strike have drawn opposition around the world, even in Britain, which was one of the few countries to back Bush down the line in his invasion of Iraq.
But administration officials have insisted a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. Cheney suggested Thursday that if the world community did nothing, Israel might decide to mount a pre-emptive strike on its own.
Analysts agreed a major move to topple the hardline clergy in Tehran was likely to be too much for a US military already stretched by the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But even surgical strikes were not without risk, they said.
"Iran does have the capability to push back," Brookings' Byman told AFP. "It has tremendous influence in Iraq, a lot of people there, and, more broadly, has an established network around the world that it's used for terrorist attacks in the past."
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